USDA’s National Agroforestry Center is launching a free 10-part monthly webinar series to highlight how different USDA programs can be used to advance agroforestry adoption.

Each individual webinar will include two speakers and one USDA agency representative, as well as one program participant who has used that USDA program to enhance their agroforestry work.

Learn how USDA programs can be utilized to promote and support agroforestry establishment, management, research, and other efforts in your area.

For more information or to register, visit the program webpage.

Join the Yard by Yard Project in OKC for its latest workshop with tips and tricks for sustainable and functional landscaping from local experts. The topic this time is water-saving landscaping for surviving the drought.

For more information, visit the program webpage, or contact Josh Kouri by email or phone (405-415-4600).

This free one-day farm to school producer training will introduce the concept of selling to local schools and help producers develop an action plan to take back and use on their operation. The Oklahoma Department of Agriculture Farm to School Program and the Arkansas Department of Agriculture Farm to School Program are working together to host the training. Meat and produce farms are invited to attend.

For more information or to register, visit the registration page, or contact Cheri Long by email or phone (405-249-9234).

Routine scouting of crops is one of the most effective pest management strategies organic farmers can use to stay ahead of costly pest and disease issues. In this presentation, we’ll review best practices around scouting and monitoring, discuss how scouting observations can be used to inform pest management, and highlight tools and resources available to farmers.

For more information or to register, visit the event webpage, or contact the Rodale Institute by email or phone (610-683-1400).

Monarch Research Review (MJV webinar)

Stay connected with the latest monarch conservation topics by attending Monarch Joint Venture’s free monthly webinars. This series is a unique opportunity to hear from experts across various interdisciplinary fields related to monarchs, other pollinators, their habitats, and the threats and pressures that make conservation urgent. Bring your questions and get ready to discover how you can get involved to protect monarchs.

All webinars are one hour long and occur at 1:00 PM Central Time. Please note that scheduled webinars are subject to change.

This free webinar is first-come, first-served, with a capacity of 500 attendees. Register early to ensure a place.

For more information or to register, visit the registration page, or contact Stacy Carlson by email or phone (651-222-7631).

All past webinars are available to view; visit MJV’s webinar archive.  This series is co-hosted by the Monarch Joint Venture and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s National Conservation Training Center.

This webinar will be a project update of a multidisciplinary project funded by the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research (FFAR). This project seeks to link soil and human health by investigating the relationship between agricultural practices, soil microbiology, and crop nutrient quality in grain crops, specifically wheat and corn. This study is measuring plant available nitrogen and soil microbial structure along with concentrations of protein, amino acids, B vitamins, and the nutraceutical amino acid ergothioneine in grain crops produced in long-term systems trials, on working farms, and in controlled field and laboratory studies.

Active research on ergothioneine is finding that this amino acid has antioxidant properties and increasingly apparent human health benefits. It is only biosynthesized by fungi and fungi-like bacteria, is present in many foods, and plants obtain it through an unknown mechanism where it is transferred up the food chain to animals and humans. Thus, there should be a clear link between soil microbiomes, ergothioneine biosynthesis in the soil, its concentration in plants, and human health.

For more information or to register, visit the event webpage, or contact the Rodale Institute by email or phone (610-683-1400).

Become a community scientist with this Monarch Larva Monitoring Project training! The MLMP team from the Monarch Joint Venture and the UW-Madison Arboretum co-lead these virtual one-day trainings on how to collect data that contributes to our knowledge about the monarch population. Participants learn about monarch biology, monitoring procedures, and data entry protocols, and are able to ask monarch biologists their questions about monarchs and monitoring.

This session will be relevant for both newcomers and individuals who are already participating in the MLMP or another monarch citizen science project. The four-hour training will be conducted in two parts with a one-hour break between them. This year, MLMP is offering three trainings focused on specific regions: western states on February 4th, southern states on February 25th, and northern states on April 29th.

For more information or to register, visit the training webpage, or contact Katie-Lyn Bunney by email or phone (651-222-7631).